Richard Sylbert

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Richard Sylbert, American motion picture production designer (born April 16, 1928, Brooklyn, N.Y.—died March 23, 2002, Woodland Hills, Calif.), won two Academy Awards for his design work on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and Dick Tracy (1990) and received Academy Award nominations for his work on four other films, Chinatown (1974), Shampoo (1975), Reds (1981), and The Cotton Club (1984). Sylbert was known for his meticulous attention to detail and for his ability to create distinctive visual moods. From 1975 to 1978 he was the head of film production at Paramount Pictures—the first production designer ever to hold that position at a major Hollywood studio.